Home Grown: Cage the Elephant and the Making of a Modern Music Scene (Kindle Single) by Craig Fehrman

Author:Craig Fehrman [Fehrman, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-10-20T07:00:00+00:00

9. At Home and Abroad

(Or: Don’t Tell the Neighborhood Association)

Lincoln Parish shakes his head. “Who would have thought the youngest one in the band would be the first one to buy a house?”

It’s late in the afternoon, and at the end of Lincoln’s street a school bus is unloading. He bought this bungalow in part because of its quiet Nashville neighborhood. “A bunch of musicians and a bunch of old people,” is how he describes it. A few doors down lives someone who’s both — Brenda Lee, the country singer who recorded with John Carpenter’s dad so many years ago.

Cage’s members have all selected different living arrangements and different attachments to home. Brad and Tich have also moved to Nashville, with Brad returning to Bowling Green once a week and Tich returning “only when I have to.” Jared rents a house in Bowling Green. Matt still lives in a room at his mom’s house, and Tich likes to joke that the singer “can’t break away from the teat.”

Matt’s not here to defend himself. (If he were, he’d point out that Cage spends most of its time on the road, and that he has a girlfriend who lives in Paris.) But the rest of the band relaxes on Lincoln’s porch, lounging in rocking chairs and swatting at plump, persistent mosquitoes. While Lincoln’s had his house for only a few months, he’s already remodeled two bedrooms and a bath into one giant industrial-strength studio. The band’s just wrapped up a long, loud day in there, working on demos for their new album Melophobia.

During the first few weeks of writing, Cage actually jammed at Jared’s parents’ house. “It was good to get back to the basement, back to our roots,” says Brad. Now, as the band unwinds on the porch, they reflect on how they got from there to here.

In the summer of 2007, right before they left for England, Cage got a chance to open for Queens of the Stone Age. It was their first taste of major-league touring, and they didn’t realize that, in most cases, the bigger the band, the stricter the backstage protocol. On the very first night Brad, who’s pretty rambunctious, the kind of person who always makes sure everyone has enough moonshine, marched up to Josh Homme, the ginger giant who fronts Queens. “He started yelling, ‘Josh, Josh, let’s wrestle,’” Jared remembers. “Josh just stared at Brad.” Thankfully, someone jumped in and introduced Brad as a member of the tour’s new openers from Bowling Green. “It all makes sense now,” Homme said with a smile. “Everyone I know from Kentucky is fucking crazy.”

The tour, needless to say, was a huge success. While Cage stuck to a budget — they wedged as many people as possible into each hotel room, Tich says, “in rooms so bad we argued over who got the air mattress” — they also played for thousands every night. Then the band boarded a plane for London, where they would spend the next two years. Launching in the U.

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